Earlier this year, residents of Weybridge House received a tip that Public Safety was installing cameras at Kitchel House, the current location of the Center for Careers and Internships (CCI), facing towards Weybridge Street, where Weybridge House sits.
“Me and a few housemates were notified during break but it was a lot of speculation,” Phoebe An ’27, a resident at Weybridge, said. “People were really unsure of the exact details of the nature of what the cameras would look like because there was no type of communication beforehand from other parts of the institution.”
“Middlebury has had cameras on its campus for a number of years,” Associate Vice President of Safety Demitria Kirby wrote in an email to the campus. “In 2019, an all-campus email to the community explained that Middlebury was investing in additional cameras to enhance security and safety on campus. As funds have been allocated each year since 2019, Middlebury has been installing additional cameras in various locations.”
Kirby added that decisions behind what buildings are chosen each year depend on “the availability of capital funding, the renovation plans of our campus partners, and historical building considerations.”
Middlebury College currently has approximately 100 cameras throughout its 150+ properties on or near the main campus. According to Campus reporting in 2020, camera installations at McCullough Student Center and BiCentennial Hall sparked student concerns around impacts on BIPOC students and institutional trust.
“When this decision was made pre-Covid, it was a very different political climate [compared to] what we’re seeing right now.” Remi Beauharnois ’27, a fellow resident, said in an interview with the Campus. “There’s a lot of concern about who has access to this footage and if they’re legally required to by federal agencies such as ICE.”
On the issue of who has access to footage, Kirby said access is tightly controlled.
“The only individuals within Public Safety who have authority to pull camera footage are myself, my associate director, assistant director, and lieutenant. Approval is only given for significant policy violations, life safety concerns, criminal investigations, or legal requests. That footage is then stored in a secure folder that only the four of us have access to,” Kirby said.
Any subpoenas and court orders are directed to the Office of the General Counsel, as per Middlebury’s Cameras on Campus policy.
The policy also notes that “[Cameras] are not monitored continuously under normal operating conditions but may be monitored for legitimate safety and security purposes.”
“Higher security has always threatened the privacy of students of color and marginalized students,” An said. “I come from Texas, so I also understand what it’s like to experience these types of situations, so it’s not like I’m coming from a naïve point of view, but I am also aware that the ability to securitize our campus is at the expense of certain students.”
Research on students of color at predominantly white institutions (PWIs) suggests disproportionate effects of physical surveillance infrastructure on students depending on their identity. Even without any cameras being installed, people of color report feelings of isolation, emotional exhaustion, and what researchers called “racial battle fatigue” due hypervisibility — a subject-specific term referring to being acutely conscious of heightened racial scrutiny in predominantly white spaces. A report found that surveillance infrastructure adds onto this existing psychological burden exacerbating a “chilling effect” — a legal term for the inhibition of the legitimate exercise of natural and legal rights – among BIPOC students due to existing fraught relationships with institutional authority.
“As a liberal arts institution that relies on academia to be the source of how we understand our principles, our values, and how we shape our communities, there should be a better way of looking into this academic work and speaking our truths,” An said.
An and Beauharnois emphasized that their concern rests on the lack of transparency in the camera installation process.
“I am aware that it’s not our choice to be able to determine whether security cameras are implemented. It’s more about the ability to have transparent conversations and be notified about it,” An said.
Both students touched on the atmosphere of fear that arose after learning the information.
“We talked to other smaller houses to ask them if they had also heard or had been notified of anything, and they said ‘no’, so there was a lot of fear mongering going on,” Beauharnois said.
“We were operating under false pretenses that aspects of the cameras were going to exist in a way that they actually aren’t so that created a lot of unmitigated fear,” An said. “When we talked to PubSafe about it, they were like ‘oh but you weren’t supposed to find out.’”
There are no provisions in the college’s Cameras on Campus policy that specifically require notifying residents when cameras are added near or in residential areas, nor is there any community consultation prior to a generic complaint process that occurs after the fact.
When questioned about whether they were planning to inform community members on Weybridge Street about the camera installations, An said that Public Safety said no, citing that they aren’t obliged to inform residents about installations per policy and that it isn’t standard for peer institutions to do so.
"We’re not trying to aspire to be like our peer institutions, we’re striving to do better than that," An said. “That means communicating with our neighbours around us.”
“Having cameras throughout campus is a matter of best practice and common amongst institutions of higher education, among other sectors,” Kirby said. “Consistent with the policy, cameras are installed in public parts of campus or facing public areas, not in spaces where there is an expectation of privacy. Depending on the locations, appropriate offices are consulted or involved, including Residential Life for any space that is a student residential facility.”
The conversation fits into a broader dialogue on camera installation and surveillance in institutions of higher education. Middlebury College’s relative safety and remote location permit it to have fewer security cameras than peer institutions. Recent trends point to expanded camera coverage driven by safety concerns, liability pressures, and institutions viewing cameras as standard practice. Peer institutions such as Vassar College and Swarthmore College reflect this trend, possessing 304 and 363, respectively, with Swarthmore adding five to eight cameras annually. These developments have been met with community response. For example, Colgate University convened a working group in 2024 to address privacy concerns related to security systems with students, faculty, and staff.
“I understand their point of view that it’s difficult to maintain the conversation throughout different generations of students, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they [should] stop the communication at all,” An said. “If you close the door for the conversation to begin with, then we have nowhere to go.”
Met Ly '28 (he/him) is a News Editor.
Met is a UWC Davis Scholar majoring in International Politics and Economics with a Creative Writing minor. He is also a fellow at the Rohatyn Center for Global Affairs. He hails from Siem Reap, Cambodia and spent his gap year there as a digital marketing manager and events coordinator. Outside the newsroom, he line dances in his cowboy boots and jams out to the Arctic Monkeys.
